A DOTA 2 championship called “The International 2015” is booked to have the largest prize pool in the history of e-sports at over $13 million as announced by game developer and publisher Valve, while the game itself is set to receive an important overhaul in the near future.
The $13.4 million prize pool might grow even higher as it is mostly fan-funded, and the pool will be open until the competition starts on the 3rd of August. The initial prize pool set by Valve was $1.6 million, but it added to it a quarter of all sales of an in-game item called “The International Compendium”, which costs $9.99/piece. The item has been available for purchase since May 1st and has helped garner the staggering amount ever since.
Valve expects the prize pool to get to at least $15 million, according to an in-game stretch goal chart which offers compendium buyers tiered rewards depending on the total amount of money raised for the prize pool. Last year’s competition raised $10.8 million in prize money following a similar model, out of which $5 million was offered to the winners of the competition, a Chinese team called NewBee. There is no information available regarding this year’s split to date.
The news comes in the midst of an important announcement made by Valve regarding the future of the popular MOBA, as it revealed its upcoming DOTA 2 Reborn. Reborn is set to be an overhaul for the game which will offer better functionality, new user interface and will port the game to a new engine.
DOTA 2 Reborn will launch as beta later next week, and more details are set to be revealed until then in three upcoming blog updates. Rumors suggest that this will be the first game running on Valve’s much anticipated Source 2 game engine, the long-awaited follow-up to the now decade-old original Source engine which powered most of Valve’s popular games during the last years.
It might also include support for custom games, a much requested feature by fans harking to the days when the original DOTA was a just competitive multiplayer mod for Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. Reports suggest it will also include extended tutorial and guided bot matches to steep the difficulty curve for newcomers to the game and teach its mechanics and tactics in a fun manner. A streaming-oriented DotaTV feature is also set to be included within the update.
Image Source: gamebreaker.tv
